


some things we don’t talk about (and just hold the smile)

by teacupsandsheepskulls



Series: baby we don't talk (about the things you do when you mean to say i love you) [5]
Category: The Fugitive (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Panic Attacks, References to Depression, about the complicated reality of loving someone with a messy mental health landscape, but also it's a sweet fic, the tags make this seem like a real sad fic, which it kind of is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:55:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25204324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teacupsandsheepskulls/pseuds/teacupsandsheepskulls
Summary: John Royce knew who Sam Gerard was the moment he met him. It's why he wanted to sleep with him and, later, why he fell in love with him. John musing on why he loves Sam, and navigating the complicated reality of loving Sam.A companion piece to "you've been talking in your sleep (every day is a lullaby when you're already hurt". Makes more sense if you've read "talking is what we do to each other with words (but baby we don't talk".
Relationships: Samuel Gerard/John Royce (U.S. Marshals)
Series: baby we don't talk (about the things you do when you mean to say i love you) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1763008
Kudos: 5





	some things we don’t talk about (and just hold the smile)

_The problem with showing your lover your scars_

_Is that everybody’s lover is covered in scars._

-from “Plain Sailing Weather” by Frank Turner

John does not often think of Daniel. At least, not anymore.

When John first met Sam Gerard, he was practically bleeding with Daniel, could have overflowed the river and the shoreline with how much of Daniel was seeping out of him. He couldn’t hear Lamb over the din, barely heard the not-quite-argument as Gerard tried be rid of him. John closed his eyes behind his sunglasses and held back a sigh, already picturing the irritability with which Gerard would likely meet every suggestion, especially because John was too junior to have any real clout (a fact he suspected Gerard would also hold against him as another sign of Lamb’s passive aggressiveness when really it was just the cherry on top).

Still, Marshal Walsh assured them there was no one more capable of capturing Mark Sheridan. John did not want the Marshals, they did not want him, and Lamb certainly didn’t want to share. That was fine. The better to keep Gerard at arm’s length, focused on capturing Sheridan and not on the tertiary details of Sheridan becoming a fugitive. If it got Daniel’s killer captured, so be it.

John knew as soon as he took off his sunglasses and met Gerard’s eye that Gerard saw straight through him. He was irritated, yes, but then, John irritated most people on purpose. But Gerard, unlike most people, was not distracted by it. The fact that he did not know the exact details was mere circumstance--the only thing standing between Gerard and the right answer was will. He could clamber into John’s head and look out at the world through John’s eyes sooner than John could realize what he was doing, if Gerard decided to do it, and it was only through stubbornness that John didn’t shiver in the late summer heat.

And yet, Gerard didn’t seem all that bothered by the details he could see. Or, more likely, John Royce was irrelevant to him.

John watched Gerard snarl his team into motion with the clear thought that Daniel would have hated him. And then he wound up watching Gerard for the better part of two days. Not because he meant to, but because he couldn’t seem to help himself.

Gerard wasn’t attractive in the conventional sense. Too severe, too sharp, too cold, all worsened by Gerard’s personality and carved into the lines of his face with middle age. Besides, the Roy Willy’s t-shirt bought last-minute to replace his soaking clothes looked ridiculous.

But he was magnetic. He had a way of drawing a room around him without saying anything and he met everything thrown his direction with the same level of unflustered, taciturn intelligence. He was an Olympic asshole, yes, but he wasn’t arrogant. He didn’t need to be. He was a lamp in the middle of a dark night and he knew it, and John, true to form, had the self-preservation instincts of a moth.

Better still was the fact that Gerard was watching him too when he thought John didn’t notice, redirecting his attention a moment before John found him again. So when John finally got the complete files on Sheridan and offered to take them to Gerard, surfacing a bottle of whiskey and some cups from a gas station on the way, John knew exactly what he was doing. And when Gerard opened the door to look out at him with those flat black eyes that reflected nothing and turned on his heel to walk into the room entirely confident John would follow, John knew exactly why he was doing it.

He was delighted to learn that Gerard was gay, though not completely surprised. After all, Gerard was watching him too. The tension in the motel room was thick enough to taste, and he knew Gerard was enjoying it, testing John’s boundaries, seeing what he could get John to show him. He wasn’t attractive in the conventional sense--the flat motel lighting only made the mismatch of his features and the lines in his face more obvious. But his face was alive with intelligence, studying John the way a wolf in wait studies a taunting rabbit, and John taunted him thinking he wouldn’t mind the feeling of Gerard’s teeth sinking into him if the wolf was this hypnotic in wait.

Even so, sleeping with Gerard was an objectively terrible idea.

He could tell himself that he was trying to distract Gerard. He could tell himself that insinuating himself like that would help him leverage Gerard, make him less likely to turn on John later when Sheridan’s cruelty inevitably surfaced. But then, he would have been lying to himself. Gerard’s seniority and reputation meant people would always hear him before they heard John. And while a one-night stand might temporarily distract him, it was nowhere near the kind of leverage necessary to stop Gerard in his tracks. John wasn’t looking to sleep with him for tactics.

He wanted to sleep with Gerard because Gerard was as much of a natural bastard as John himself. Here was a man who would meet his eye and tear him apart without a second thought. Here was a man who would not feel sorry for leaving ashes in his wake. Somehow felt more like solace than anything John had found in the three weeks since Daniel’s murder.

But Gerard surprised him. Gerard asked if he loved Daniel, and when John answered yes, tasting the saltwater flood of his grief drowning him, Gerard replied that he shouldn’t have gotten caught.

John kissed him because he was right.

Gerard was stone to the touch, and when John pulled away, Gerard let him, watching him with those flat black eyes that reflected nothing when he said he would not capitalize on John’s grief. He said he was not Daniel Ward, that fucking him or killing Sheridan wouldn’t bring Daniel Ward back, and he was right. And when Gerard stepped into John’s space and informed him in the tone of a bullet sliding into a magazine that John wasn’t going to get in his way, John nodded, because he was right about that too.

Then Gerard was gone, and John sank down onto the bed to let all the air out of his lungs.

John never did tell Annie the full extent of what happened in Tennessee. She knows about the motel, of course, but John never did tell her about the swamp and the brief moment when he thanked Gerard for everything. He already knew that if he tried, he wouldn’t have been able to impart its importance, that those moments--less than fifteen minutes in total--are the real reason Gerard stuck with him when by all rights John should have left him behind forever in Tennessee.

When he took the job in Chicago, the fact of Gerard being based in Chicago whispered through his mind more than once, though he would not admit it to himself.

John took the job because he needed to leave New York. Lamb did not know anything of the hearsay about Daniel in part because it was scattered but mostly because he did not want to--he had always liked Daniel as much as he disliked John, and his willingness to make John’s exit a positive one was extended insofar as John cooperated in allowing Daniel’s death to pass into the realm of one more painful memory. Charlie Perry, for his part, seemed happy to receive a young agent he could train to his own liking, told John over the phone that he didn’t give a single solitary shit what went on in New York. John’s record showed the makings of a good agent, and so long as John made it his business to prove that hiring him was worth Perry’s while, that was all Perry cared about. John recognized it as the forgiveness and fresh start he did not deserve and took Perry up on his offer of a job. The fact that Gerard happened to be based in Chicago was irrelevant.

Even so, John walked to his gate in JFK with the clear image of Gerard giving him a small nod before turning on his heel to walk out of John’s life and onto a plane for Chicago, and John took his seat telling himself that he was not following Gerard’s shadow.

More than a year later, John still doesn’t know if he was lying to himself on that plane. But still, when he looks to his left when running or looks up from case files or looks across the table at dinner and sees Sam, no longer Gerard but _Sam_ , he can’t find it in him to be sorry.

John doesn’t let himself compare Sam and Daniel. At least, not anymore. It’s not a fair comparison on either side. There are still some moments, though, that the comparison hits him with the force of a knuckle to the nose, the subtle disparities and similarities between Sam and Daniel.

They would have clashed with each other, not in the way that John and Sam clashed with each other in those endless weeks when Sam tried to push John away out of jealousy but in the way of two people who were never meant to get along. They would have tolerated each other, not in the way that John and Sam tolerated each other in Tennessee or the many times after but in the way one tolerates going to the dentist--a necessary but deeply unpleasant evil to be endured as infrequently and swiftly as possible.

Daniel was the type to speak quietly, nudging people into wanting to tell him what he needed to know. Sam is the type to trick people into saying more than they intend. Daniel invited people to feel safe around him while he read their secrets between the lines. Sam lets people know he can see straight through them at the same moment he lets them feel the rope around their necks. Daniel had a gift for getting along with everyone, but especially the people he liked. Sam gets along with no one, including the people he likes. Daniel’s attention made people feel important. Sam’s attention demands that people prove their importance. Daniel would have thought Sam was a mean sonofabitch and calling him that would have been an insult to the bitch. Sam would have thought Daniel was an arrogant, self-righteous prick and calling him that would have been an insult to every prick who actually earned his arrogance and self-righteousness.

They would have despised each other for the same reason Daniel and Thomas never much liked each other, the same reason Thomas and Sam would have probably gotten along rather well. Then again, John doesn’t let himself think about Sam and Thomas in the same context very often for the same reason he still doesn’t let himself think about Thomas’s suicide unless he has time and space to be alone or very drunk. Preferably both.

Thomas’s suicide hit him with the force of a flood, the knowledge of the pain Thomas couldn’t survive paired with a loneliness that washed over him with the totality of being dropped in the middle of the ocean with weights tied to his feet. He drank more than he drank in eight years for three days straight and it did not abate, not even when he called Sam desperate to reassure himself that Sam wasn’t dead too, not even when he stayed on the phone with Sam breathing for an hour because he could only remember how when he heard Sam doing it, not even with the reassurance that Sam stayed on the phone and never once gave any indication of impatience or expectation. He couldn’t bring himself to call Annie even though he knew she needed him now as much as he needed her, couldn’t make himself dial knowing that he would hear the emptiness of Thomas’s absence ringing back at him as Annie’s grief mirrored his own.

John had mourned friends, too many to AIDS and many to other reasons, but he had not mourned them like this. He had mourned Daniel’s death for its cruelty and its suddenness and the knowledge that the love he had for Daniel would no longer have even an echo in the world, but he had not mourned Daniel like this.

Unlike his brother and Howard, John never had many friends, or even people in his periphery the way his brother and Howard always seemed to attract them. John has had friends, still has several old friends, but only a few people have ever actually known him, and that number has only dwindled with age. Most people get taken in by what John wants them to see, which is a talent John shared with Howard, but unlike Howard, he always used it to keep people out. People expect John to be an arrogant, irritating jackass, and so he lets them see an arrogant, irritating jackass safe in the knowledge that they will look no further.

Only a few people have been able to see more than John wants them to. Annie has always been able to see straight through him. Daniel did, at least for a little while at the very end. His mother did sometimes, when she wanted to, when it was convenient for her. And Thomas, who he met as a freshman at NYU and went to law school with and who became the third part of John and Annie like he always belonged there.

Even fewer people know him and actually like what they see. By the age of thirty, that list dwindled to two people: Annie and Thomas. Daniel loved John (even toward the end) but there were plenty of times (especially toward the end) that Daniel didn’t like him.

John has a good heart, but he’s not a good person. He’s certainly not a nice one. Daniel thought they were the same thing until John. Which is why, even with all the love John had for Daniel, John also knew he would one day disappoint Daniel, and that would be the day Daniel realized John was being honest when he said he’s not a good person. Because Daniel saw his good heart and thought that meant he was a good person, and Daniel was wrong. It means he’s a bad person who does good things. By the time Daniel believed him, John knew it would be over, because now he would see John as he saw Annie and Thomas--bad people who do good things because doing good things is simply what they ought to do, not because they think people are inherently good and certainly not because they think people deserve it. The three of them never judged each other for it, but Daniel did, could never reconcile Annie’s drive to save people as an ER doctor with Annie the person or Thomas’s drive to defend and uphold the law in court with Thomas the person. And, later, John’s drive to be an FBI agent with…well. John.

Then it was over, and Thomas was the one who convinced him it was a good thing.

“The rest of the world already hates us,” he had said on the phone. “You don’t need him to make you feel small too.”

John stared around his apartment, which still felt empty without Daniel there. “Is he right? About me?”

“Despite what His Holiness thinks, you’re not the only terrible person at the FBI,” Thomas replied with typical Thomas bluntness. “Difference between you and them is that you care about saving people despite knowing that people aren’t fairy tales. And if that’s not good enough for him, he doesn’t have the first clue what he just gave up.”

Thomas was his second call after Daniel died, and he and Annie took turns making sure John was vaguely functional, at least half sober, and more or less sane. Their calls became more sporadic after John moved to Chicago, between John acclimating to a new office and Thomas getting buried alive in legal documents at his new firm, but they called once every few weeks or so. Sometimes more if Annie dragged the three of them on the phone to terrorize Thomas with embellished gore stories. Thomas took it as his moral duty to give John shit about Sam at every possible opportunity, including increasingly embarrassing cracks about sleeping with older men that definitely scarred Annie for life.

“Only you could fall for someone who’s a bigger jackass than you,” he liked to say, which was Thomas for _thank god you finally fell for someone who’s enough of a jackass to keep up with you_.

After Christmas happened, Thomas demanded Christmas cards and front row seats to the wedding.

“I’m not a princess, he’s not Prince Charming, and no one’s getting swept over a threshold in a white dress,” John retorted. “I look dead in white.”

There was silence on the line, then a muttered, “Holy shit.”

“What?”

Thomas’s grin was audible from several states away. “You do want to marry him.”

John hung up on him. He still picked up the phone when Thomas immediately called back, even though Thomas was still laughing.

And when Thomas killed himself after testing positive, John drank enough to drown because it felt like a reminder. It does not matter how deeply they love because the world has no place for homosexuality. It does not matter that they do good things because the world has no place for bad people. It does not matter that they save people’s lives because their lives are not allowed to have happy endings.

Still, John thinks, when he lets himself consider it, that Sam and Thomas would have liked each other for the same reason he and Annie were always so fond of Thomas. Because the truth is, Sam’s not a good person either.

And honestly? John is perfectly alright with that.

John knew who Sam was from the moment he met Sam in Tennessee. Sam has a good heart, but he’s not a good person. Sam is secretly a marshmallow and can be surprisingly kind when he wants to be and will always go out of his way to take care of his people in his own way and none of that is mutually exclusive from the fact that Sam is an Olympic gold medal asshole. Much like John, Sam isn’t a Marshal out of a belief that people are good but because he firmly believes they deserve to be protected anyway and because protecting gives him a purpose. And just as John saw through Sam that first day in Tennessee, Sam saw straight through John too. And still, he gave John a chance. He’s always known who John is and has never once viewed it as a deterrent to his ability to be a good lawman. And as in Tennessee, Sam could tear John apart without a second thought, but he chooses not to. Not because John is irrelevant to him, but because John matters enough to him to try to make their jagged edges fit together so they embrace instead of cutting each other.

As far as John’s concerned, that’s a stronger statement of love than any form of self-delusion.

John doesn’t let himself compare Sam and Thomas. At least, not very often. Not because it’s an unfair comparison, but because it’s only a fair comparison sometimes. Sam wasn’t lying that day when he said he’s not Thomas Abbott, but there are some days when that’s less true than others. And those are the days that terrify John.

Because while Sam is not Thomas, there are some days, uncommon but frightening, in which Sam is quite a lot like Thomas on that last Wednesday that John ever spoke to him.

It’s not that Sam thinks he’s indestructible. It’s that Sam knows he’s all too destructible and he doesn’t care. Worse, there’s a part of Sam that thinks he deserves to take all that pain so that other people don’t have to. A part of him that thinks he deserves to be hurt. A not insignificant part of him that only knows how to feel at ease with himself when he’s hurting.

John would know.

He thought he understood it, Sam’s destructiveness, his hurt. Thought he had a map of its terrain, a guidebook for the rules. Sam will throw himself in the way of harm when it presents itself (on the job, for example, which is all too easy being a Marshal), but Sam will not harm himself in a vacuum. Sam will have frighteningly dark days, but Sam will not harm himself on purpose, nor will Sam seek out harm when he gets days like that. So John thought.

And that was terrifying, but it had scope. It had limits.

Seeing Sam in the kitchen in the blackest hours of night, coming apart at the seams and doing everything in his power not to pick up his gun and use it, it settles over John like the sudden onset of winter.

He drags Sam bodily away from the gun, holding on too tight to breathe so he doesn’t fall apart too. Sam is more fragile than John has ever seen him and John falling apart now would be selfish. Sam needs him. So he walks backward through Sam’s apartment pulling Sam with him, feeling his heart pulse with every step further away from the gun. He doesn’t succeed in dragging Sam all the way back to bed, though, knows as soon as Sam clings to him for dear life that they’re not moving any further. Sam never clings, not physically, and now all he can do is hide in John’s t-shirt from whatever’s going on in his head. So John holds on as tight as he can and gives Sam a place to hide.

He doesn’t breathe until Sam finally falls asleep, stares at the clock until four a.m. when Sam shifts and John can disentangle himself without waking Sam. He scrubs away all evidence of last night and leaves voicemails getting them both out of work in a few hours, though it takes all his will to lock up Sam’s gun instead of taking it apart and smashing the pieces. Five hours later, it takes all the will he has left not to grab hold of Sam and never let go once Sam finally lets him see.

When he realizes that Sam hid from him out of guilt for not feeling happy, as if not feeling happy is a betrayal to John, John hates Philip Gerard and Marie and all the men who came before him, the people who convinced Sam that he was only enough when he was the person they wanted him to be. Who convinced him that his pain was his own creation, that it was only worth something if he could point to a bullet hole or a tiring week. He spends the rest of the day not letting go of Sam if he can help it and repeating that Sam is worth everything to him in every way he knows how.

And when Sam wakes him up that night, John makes tea and talks Sam’s ear off while Sam directs him through baking a loaf of lemon bread. He catches Sam on his way from the oven and just holds on, feeling in the way Sam holds on that he’s still off balance. But Sam woke him up, and Sam let him be with him and make tea and talk his ear off with quiet relief, and though John can still feel the frost in his bones, he goes back to sleep with Sam next to him thinking it’s so much more than they had the night before.

John doesn’t realize the depth of the chill until a week later when he’s at home making dinner while Sam was on a fugitive hunt. He’s chopping vegetables until suddenly he isn’t, when he drops the knife in his hand because his hand dissolves into tremors and he drops broccoli all over the floor because his vision blurred and he stumbles backward because his legs are unsteady, falling into the tile as his head and back hit the cabinets with a thud he doesn’t feel, his entire body shaking, gasping for air.

He’s collected again when Sam appears in his doorway, pulling him in to kiss him hard, which Sam returns with a contented hum. Then John’s hip hits Sam’s gun still holstered at his side and ice shoots up his spine. He breaks away from Sam with a wide smile he doesn’t feel and takes the gun carefully from Sam’s hip, pecking Sam on the side of the mouth so he can’t see the confused look Sam is giving him, stepping around Sam to carry his gun to the safe as he asks Sam to stir the vegetables.

John can’t breathe again until the safe is locked again. A voice in his head reminds him coolly that this is unfair of him, that he’s manipulating Sam when he should be talking to him. He hears Sam shuffling off his jacket and shoes in the kitchen and shoves the thought into the far corner of his mind. He can’t bring that up tonight without it coming out all wrong, and in any case, he’s not ready to address that yet with himself, never mind with Sam.

Still, the thought lingers, and for two weeks John has to suppress the urge to freeze every time he sees Sam’s gun, has to stop himself from reaching out and moving it away from Sam every time the gun is in Sam’s vicinity.

It’s ridiculous, he knows, and it’s certainly not healthy. Sam is a U.S. Marshal, a law enforcement officer. Carrying a gun is as much a requirement of his job as John’s. John can’t take his gun from him, and even if he could, taking Sam’s gun isn’t the answer, though it doesn’t stop John from wanting to.

Still, John convinces himself that it’s just Sam’s gun, a product of the moment still dancing behind his eyelids when Sam wouldn’t look at him because he couldn’t stop looking at his gun. John knows he’s full of shit when Sam is on a fugitive hunt and he has to duck out in the middle of a team meeting to hide in the bathroom and breathe through a panic attack.

He comes back to reality after a few minutes because there’s knocking on the door. “Royce?”

Burkhardt. John stands up, straightens his suit, checks himself in the mirror and unlocks the door. “You know, despite the fact that we joke about you being a puppy, it would be nice to pee in peace.”

Burkhardt looks concerned, which is never a good sign, and follows him into the bathroom while John washes his hands. “You alright? You bailed out of there pretty quick.”

“Yeah.” John yanks on the paper towel and it tears. “Just needed a minute. The photos on the board are a lot.” 

Burkhardt shudders. “No kidding.”

John pulls a complete sheet of paper towel and doesn’t look at Burkhardt. “Thought I was getting dizzy there for a sec. Didn’t want to embarrass myself.” He should probably be ashamed he’s using evidence photos to lie, but they are unusually gory. It doesn’t seem possible for humans to have that much blood. “Even though I probably succeeded.”

“Nah. You’re pale though.”

“Gee thanks.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

John chucks the paper towel in the trash thinking Burkhardt really is a puppy, and he’s entirely too easy to manipulate. “Not particularly.”

Burkhardt shrugs, opening the bathroom door. “Well, if you change your mind, door’s always open.”

John gives him a look. “We work in four desks in bullpen formation. You don’t have a door.”

It works like a charm. “Asshole. You know what I mean.”

The second fugitive hunt a week later is fine. John thinks he’s fine the third fugitive hunt two weeks after that until he comes into Sam’s apartment after work to find Sam cleaning a scrape on his leg at the kitchen table with hydrogen peroxide and cotton swabs. It’s not anything, barely more than a scratch, but John can’t look away from the blood.

He stays frozen like that until Sam finishes cleaning and dressing it and looks up at John, starting to stand up, at which point John walks over, shoves him back into the chair, straddles his legs, and accosts him with tongue and teeth and roving hands.

Sam is here. Sam is alive. Sam is perfectly fine. Sam lets out a breathless laugh that vibrates against John’s lips. “Apparently I need to get scraped up more often.”

He hisses when John grabs a handful of his hair. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

It takes one month, Sam getting scratched up on an in-and-out hunt, and John having to apologize to Hill for the stick shoved up his ass for him to realize why the fugitive hunts put him on edge. It’s not the fact of the hunts--most of Sam’s job puts him in close proximity to dangerous situations. It’s the fact that Sam has a heart of gold and a frankly terrifying compulsion to protect the people he cares about, and the fact that it’s easy for Sam to use his need to protect his people to conceal his utter lack of regard for his own safety. So easy, in fact, that’s often difficult to tell which is which until afterward when Sam has already collected more than his share of brutality from people who would gladly kill him if presented the opportunity.

John knows that he needs to talk to Sam after he spends all day staring at files knowing that Sam is on a fugitive hunt. But Sam has actually been better for the last few weeks--calm, happy even--and he also doesn’t want to give Sam another bad spiral when Sam seems to be doing quite well. He doesn’t want to be angry with Sam either, because this isn’t Sam’s fault, not really. He needs Sam to recognize that this isn’t healthy for himself or for John and to at least be willing to think about safer ways to deal with whatever’s going on, and he needs a rational conversation for that. Otherwise Sam will just lock him out and they’ll be even worse off than before because Sam will actively try to hide things from John again.

So he waits for the right moment, the right words, eventually convincing himself that he’s going to talk to Sam on a Friday dinner in Sam’s apartment, where Sam will be in his safe space and John can bring it up calmly and they can talk about it and, if necessary, give each other breathing room over the weekend. He convinces himself he’s going to do it the following Friday.

That Wednesday, Sam gets hurt on a fugitive hunt.

He knows because Newman calls to let him know Sam is at Cook County Hospital, probably because no one else was available. They were wrong to have Newman call him, because he gets out of Newman in less than a minute that Sam is in Cook County for no good reason. The fugitive, Michael Mazetti, was a violent moron who should have been captured quickly, but he happened to bolt for the woods when he saw the Marshals coming. Sam should have been with Poole, but he wasn’t, because he was chasing Mazetti in the woods and lost him. Had he been with Poole, she might have seen Mazetti coming up next to him. But because he wasn’t, Mazetti got a good swing at his head and another good swing at his shoulder before Sam got enough presence of mind to lunge at him, sending them both ass over teakettle down a short hill. Which also would have been fine, except Sam landed on a rock and Mazetti landed on top of him, rolled away, and managed to kick Sam a few more times before Biggs and Henry descended on him. Which is why Sam is in Cook County for at least the night with four broken ribs, a bad concussion, a broken arm, a broken collarbone and possibly some muscles torn in his shoulder.

John sits there in silence with the phone next to his ear for a solid twenty seconds. He can hear Newman nervously repeating his name. He hangs up without a word and walks into Perry’s office.

“I need to go to Cook County.”

Perry takes one good look at him and knows. “Go. Take care of your people. Call me when you know what’s going on.”

John turns on his heel without reply and leaves, grabbing his jacket without answering any of the questions Hill, Burkhardt, and Wang try to ask.

He drives to Cook County on autopilot, asks a nurse what room Sam Gerard is in, and makes his way there without seeing. Sam’s kids close around him in the waiting room and he shoulders through them without speaking, striding to Sam’s room and shutting the door in the their faces.

The lights are dim and the blinds are drawn and Sam’s eyes are closed anyway against even the idea of brightness. The low light somehow makes the bruise on the side of his face worse. His arm is in a sling and there are bandages on his shoulder and ribs. He’s not asleep, though, because his eyes open immediately as soon as John sits down, though his head remains still and his eyes stay fixed in one spot. Sam’s good hand is within reach, but John doesn’t take it.

“John.”

John keeps his face carefully blank, looking at Sam’s eyes and not at the rest of him. They’re darker than ever in the low light. “Why are you here?”

Sam lets out a long breath that clearly hurts him. “We had a fugitive. Michael Mazetti.”

“That’s not what I asked, but we can start there if you’d like.”

Sam’s eyes tighten. John keeps his face blank. “He managed to startle Cosmo and scuffle with him, but by the time Poole and I got there, he was gone and we thought Cosmo might have messed up his ankle. I saw him make for the woods and went after him. He got a few lucky swings and I got an unlucky landing.”

John resists the urge to comment that luck had nothing to do with it. “Why wasn’t Poole with you?”

“I told her to stay behind and make sure Cosmo was alright.”

“What about the rest of them? Why didn’t you take one of them with you?”

“I told Biggs and Henry to spread out in case Mazetti decided to branch off.”

“Before you saw him take off?”

“After. Apparently they didn’t listen.”

John resists the urge to comment that Sam’s lucky Biggs and Henry were smart enough not to follow his orders, mostly by virtue of biting down hard on his tongue. “Where was Newman?”

“Further back. I radioed him and told him to organize the cops to sweep the woods.”

John blinks, has to breathe for a second, because this is somehow worse than he thought it was. “So,” he says, and even he can hear how clipped his voice is, “you had access to all of your kids and police backup and you used none of them.”

Sam’s eyes narrow. “We had a fugitive to catch. I needed to make sure he didn’t slip away from us.”

“No,” John replies coolly, “you had a fugitive you knew was violent and you saw where he went and you made sure no one would know where you were.”

“I did my job,” Sam snaps.

“By making sure your kids couldn’t do theirs.”

“I kept them at a safe distance in case we needed a wide net.”

“A safe distance that never applies to you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

John sighs and scrubs a hand over his eyes, holding it there to see his thoughts unspool in the dark behind his eyelids. He’s not sure how long they sit there in silence, nor is he sure if it’s too long or nowhere near long enough.

“John?”

John doesn’t remove his hand from his face. “I really, really did not want to have this conversation this way, but I guess we’re doing this now.” He takes his hand from his eyes and lets it drop on the arm of the chair, looking at Sam with all his emotions buried as deep as possible. “Is this part of the nights you can’t sleep?”

Sam blinks at him. “What?”

“The nights you can’t sleep. When you need something else to think about. Is this,” John nods to the hospital bed, the bandages, because any large movements would let his mind slip free of its tight leash, “part of that?”

Sam blinks at him again, not fast enough for John to miss the shutters closing in his eyes. “No.”

“You are so full of shit.”

“Michael Mazetti doesn’t have anything to do with me not being able to sleep,” Sam says through clenched teeth.

“I’m not talking about Mazetti,” John snaps, staying still as a stone in his chair, though he’s not sure if it’s meant to keep himself or Sam penned in. He’s not quite sure if he cares. “I’m talking about your overwhelming impulse to put yourself in dangerous situations for no reason.”

“I’m a Marshal,” Sam replies, his eyes dark with warning. “Dangerous situations are my job.”

“ _This_ wasn’t part of your job. _This_ didn’t need to happen.”

Sam’s eyes flash, a warning rumble of thunder overhead. “I was protecting my kids.”

“Your kids are Marshals just as much as you are. And last I checked, they’re perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.”

“They have families. People who care about them.”

“ _So do you_.” It tears out of John like a wild animal, something prowling for the satisfaction of sinking its claws into something living.

“You would have me look their families in the eye and tell them I wasn’t there to take care of them?”

“Do _not_ make me the bad guy. Don’t you fucking dare,” John snarls. “We are not arguing about your kids and you know it.”

“Then what are we arguing about? Because you seem to be the only one that knows.”

John’s eyes sting and his entire body feels like a clenched fist. “We’re arguing about the fact that I woke up in the middle of the night two months ago and found you with your gun out trying not to kill yourself and you’ve given every indication since then that you’re alright and then I got a phone call saying you threw yourself into a situation that could have killed you for _no fucking reason_.”

Sam flinches as if John hit him. “That doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“So what, exactly? You were fine for two months and then you just accidentally made sure a violent fugitive had a chance to bash your brains in?”

“That isn’t what happened.”

“Were you hiding this from me?”

“No.”

John can’t help the hysterical laugh that bubbles out of him. “Jesus Christ, do you even know you’re doing it?”

“Don’t.” Sam’s voice is as cold and sharp as a surgeon’s saw, an echo of that night in the kitchen that won’t stop replaying in John’s head.

“So you do know. You just don’t care.”

“ _Don’t_.” Sam’s eyes are a cold black ocean promising nothing but miles of distance and lack of oxygen. “I’m sitting here having this argument because all I’ve ever done is make myself care.”

“You’ve made it pretty fucking clear that you don’t care if someone’s willing to do the job for you.” John’s voice is rising with every successive word and the words won’t stop flooding now, even though he can see Sam recoiling.

“That isn’t true,” Sam says, small and quiet.

“Then _help me understand!_ ” They can probably hear him eight floors down. He doesn’t care.

Sam shifts his jaw and stares at John, silence stretching between them louder than John’s scream.

When John speaks again, he’s quiet, but the hard edge in his voice remains. “I meant it when I said you don’t need a reason. And I meant it when I said I signed on for you warts and all. I don’t care how bad the noise is. I don’t care if you don’t always want to tell me about it or if you don’t always want my help. We can figure it out as long as you’re honest with me. I don’t care as long as you’re safe. But this?” John nods again to the bandages with flinty eyes. “This I care about. This is you seeking out dangerous situations whenever they present themselves and saying it’s worry for your kids when really it’s a complete lack of worry for yourself. This is you seeking out dangerous situations even when it seems like you’re completely fine. This is you acting like getting hurt isn’t a big deal when you went to great pains to make sure you would get hurt. You can call it whatever you want, but it’s a pattern, and one of these times you’re going to get yourself killed and it won’t be an accident. And I did not agree to spend every day terrified of that possibility.”

John looks down at the tile under the bed because he can’t keep looking at Sam without saying something cruel. He stands and turns to leave, but Sam catches his wrist before he can take a step.

It’s like the morning after the kitchen all over again, except this time, John doesn’t look up from the tile in front of him. “I’m going to call Perry and I’m going to get some air. I’ll be back in a while before visiting hours end. If you check yourself out early I will sic Annie and Poole on you.” Then he pulls his wrist free and walks out without looking back at Sam.

John doesn’t look at Sam’s kids when he steps out of the room and closes the door behind him. He doesn’t need to. They’re entirely too quiet.

Cosmo falls into stride alongside him. “John.”

“Not now, Cosmo.”

“Where are you going?”

“To borrow a phone,” John replies, walking toward the nurse’s station as if Cosmo isn’t there.

“Listen--”

“Fuck off, Cosmo.”

Cosmo does falter, and when John stops at the nurse’s station to ask about a phone, Cosmo isn’t next to him anymore.

Perry must have been sitting next to his phone, because he picks up almost immediately. “Royce?”

“Yeah, boss.”

He hears Perry shooing someone out of his office and the door closing behind them. Still, Perry’s voice is quieter when he asks, “What the hell’s going on? Is Gerard alright?”

“He’s fine.”

“Getting checked into the hospital is not fine, so what the hell happened?”

John breathes through his nose and reminds himself Perry isn’t a threat. “Fugitive hunt went to shit.”

“Chihuahua shit or flood the pipes shit?”

“Four broken ribs, broken arm, broken collarbone, bad concussion, possibly torn muscles in his shoulder,” John says, in the tone of reciting multiplication tables so he doesn’t have to think about what the injuries mean yet.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Perry sighs. “How long are they keeping him?”

“Don’t know yet. Tonight at least.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. You sure he’s alright?”

“Breathing, isn’t he?” John mutters, which he did not intend to say out loud. The silence at the other end of the line confirms it was a bad idea.

“You alright, son?”

John grits his teeth and stares at a scratch in the counter. “I’m fine.”

“Bullshit.”

John doesn’t have a reply to that. So instead he says, “I can come in for a few hours, but I said I’d be back before visiting hours end.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Perry says sternly. “Stay and take care of your people. We’ll get you up to speed in the morning.”

It’s kind, even though John doesn’t have the first damn clue how to take care of his people. “Thanks, boss.”

He can hear Perry’s irritation from miles away. “The hell are you thanking me for? It’s what we do.”

John…doesn’t quite know what to do with that, even if he appreciates the sentiment. “I’ll see you in the morning then.” There’s a click and Perry’s gone, leaving John without his originally planned escape route of a couple hours in the office. He can hear Sam’s kids behind him, undoubtedly having heard the whole thing. He doesn’t turn and look at them, walking further down the hall and to the stairwell.

He winds up in the hospital cafeteria with lukewarm instant coffee and a dry bagel, which he sets on a napkin and picks apart, chewing on a bit of it every third tear or so, listening to people come and go.

After a while, someone pulls out the chair across from him and drops into it. John looks up to give them a frigid stare meaning _go the fuck away_ and finds Poole, who is somewhere relatively high on the list of people he does not want to see and is definitely not going the fuck away.

“I thought I told you to fuck off.”

“You told Cosmo to fuck off,” Poole replies. She looks shaken, now that John looks at her, which still doesn’t help her cause. Or Sam’s.

“It was broadly implied.”

Poole just hums, setting down a fresh cup of coffee in front of him.

He leaves it in the no man’s land between them and glares at her. “Either tell me what you want or go away.”

“I know Sam can be difficult--”

“I’m really not in the mood to hear you make excuses for him.”

“It’s not an excuse,” Poole replies evenly, “I’m saying he’s a stubborn pain in the ass.”

“Commiseration won’t get you far either.”

Poole lifts an eyebrow and folds her hands, waiting. John stares back at her. “I haven’t known Sam as long as Cosmo, but I know he’s stubborn in the same way. He cares about his people and he wants to take care of them.”

“At the cost of of himself.”

“That’s my point.”

“Got there on my own, thanks.”

Poole just keeps looking at him steadily, all his efforts to irritate her causing not a single ripple in her calm. “Walsh hired Sam in 1974. He was a Marshal for four years and a cop for five before that. He didn’t meet Cosmo until 1980, and Cosmo’s known him longer than any of us. Biggs and Henry didn’t show up until ‘83, and I got there the year after. By then, we were all married. Biggs and Henry already had kids when Sam got them, and Cosmo had his kids in ‘84. Then there’s Newman, who’s still a green kid and has his parents checking in on him.”

“I get the picture.” John returns to the bagel he’s shredding, tearing a piece in his fingers. “Big happy family.”

“No.” He looks up again to find Poole inspecting him. “We already had families when Sam met us. Sam hadn’t had a family in almost a decade when Walsh hired him, and he thinks this,” she holds up her left hand, lets her wedding band catch the light, “is more binding than any family we offer him.” She sets it back down, glinting in the flat fluorescent light. “We’ve all been telling him for years that he’s as much a part of the family as my husband or Cosmo’s kids. We thought he believed us, but, well.” Her lips press into a thin line. “Kelly and Rosetti proved us wrong.”

John shakes his head, dropping the bits of bagel back on the napkin in front of him. “No. Kelly and Rosetti proved he was afraid of you. He’s still willing to get himself killed for you.”

Poole sighs. “That’s what I’m saying. Sam cares about his people, and as far as he’s concerned, his people have families to go home to.”

“And he doesn’t.” It stings worse than he thought, saying it out loud.

“He didn’t,” Poole says gently. “He does now. He has you.”

“Does it matter? Because from where I’m sitting,” John sweeps his hand in a circle, gesturing to the hospital around them, “the net result is still the same.”

“Like I said, he’s a stubborn pain in the ass. And like most stubborn pains in the ass, he’s emotionally constipated and bad at communication.”

“I can’t stop him.” He doesn’t mean to say it, but the words are true anyway. “I’m trying to help but I don’t know how. And I can’t,” he stops, lets the air out of his lungs, tries to breathe again, “I can’t keep waiting for a phone call from one of you saying he’s gotten himself killed knowing he didn’t try to prevent it.”

“The fact that we’re sitting here having this conversation is proof that Sam already learned new tricks for you.” Poole smiles at him. “You’re learning. So’s he. And if a stubborn old mutt like Sam is willing to learn new tricks, then just about anything is possible. He just needs a bit of guidance. And occasionally a swift kick in the ass.” She stands up, pushing the coffee closer to his hand. “Talk to him. You’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks Poole,” he says softly, addressing the coffee cup next to his hand.

Poole just nods. Then she’s gone.

John sits for another twenty minutes, organizing his thoughts while shredding the bagel in front of him. At three-thirty, he dumps the bagel and the coffee in the trash and makes his way back to Sam’s room. Most of his kids are gone from the waiting room except for Cosmo, who’s on the phone at the nurse’s station and doesn’t see him. He slips by before Cosmo notices him and closes the door to Sam’s room behind him, hoping it’s enough of an indicator to keep other people out.

Sam looks up with hopeful eyes that flood with relief when he sees John. “I thought you’d left,” he says, sounding like sandpaper.

“You idiot,” John mutters. Sam’s eyes widen in a flash flood of panic, and John walks over to pull the chair forward and take Sam’s good hand. “I was never leaving. I just needed air.”

Sam grips his hand just looks at John for a moment. When it’s clear John won’t vanish in a puff of smoke, he closes his eyes and lets himself breathe. “I owe you some explanations.”

“Okay.”

Sam blinks his eyes open and looks at John, but he falters when he gets there. He tries shifting his head, but that moves muscles in his neck that attach to his collarbone and his face pinches.

John waits for him to resettle and squeezes his hand. “Take your time.”

“I’ve already taken too much time,” he says through his teeth, his face slowly relaxing as the pain settles.

 _You are the most stubborn man I’ve ever met_ , John thinks fondly.

Sam’s eyes search John’s face and he draws a breath, finally shaping it into words. “You were right. About this being part of the nights I can’t sleep.” John’s mouth presses together and his grip on Sam’s hand tightens. “But today wasn’t, and I’m not saying that to make you drop it. Sometimes it is about the nights I can’t sleep and sometimes it’s about wanting to protect my kids. Today was the latter category. I wasn’t hiding anything from you--I was actually doing fine until this happened. Better than fine.” His thumb traces across John’s knuckles even as his eyes trace a pattern across John’s face. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I saw Cosmo on the ground with what looked like a sprained ankle and thought he’d be safer with Poole in case Mazetti tried to jump him again and take his gun. I didn’t want Mazetti taking swings at Bobby or Henry either, so I went after him and told them to wing out. I thought Mazetti would probably try to hide again and either we’d find him or we wouldn’t before Noah got there with the cops. I thought he might try to spring out at me since I was an easier target, and either Bobby and Henry would get there when they heard the shouting or I’d have level odds since I knew his playbook.”

John sighs. “Can you see where I’m having an issue with this, Sam? Your safety never crossed your radar, even if you didn’t actually mean to get hurt.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t want to leave Cosmo unprotected, sure. Leaving Poole with him makes sense. But you didn’t want Bobby and Henry to get hit either. So why not keep Bobby and Henry closer to you? They couldn’t have swept the woods thoroughly even if they spread out from you, and if Mazetti did manage to hit one of you, the other two could have stopped him from doing any major damage.”

Sam shakes his head, wincing as he does. “I didn’t want them taking hits if they didn’t have to.”

“You didn’t have to either,” John says gently. “You isolated them from risk and left yourself wide open.”

Sam’s thumb traces circles on his hand as Sam turns his thoughts over. “I always think of their kids and their wives,” he says finally. “Them having to get that call. Having to see one of them in a hospital bed.”

“You refer to them as your kids. You spend the holidays with them. Their kids think of you like their uncle. Has it never occurred to you that they don’t want to see this happen to you either?”

Sam’s eyes flicker to his face. “Or you.”

“Or me,” John replies. “I’ll admit I have a minor advantage, knowing what the job actually entails on account of working a similar one, but I don’t want to get that phone call any more than they do.” Sam is silent for a long moment, frowning into dim corner of the room. “I can hear gears spinning, what’s going on up there?”

Finally, Sam says, “I’m not used to it.”

“What?”

“Thinking about my own safety.”

“I know,” John says softly. “That’s what terrifies me. You’re not used to thinking about it, so you just do things like this. And by the time you actually do mean to get hurt, it’s a habit.”

Sam laces their fingers together and tugs John closer. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know,” John says. “But you did. Hurting yourself to avoid hurting other people is still hurting other people. You keep acting like it doesn’t hurt anyone else if you get hurt, like no one will care, but that’s not true. I for one care quite a bit, and I can think of at least five other people who would be pissed at the suggestion that no one would care if you got killed.”

Sam nods stiffly. “I know that, objectively.”

John reaches his free hand to clasp Sam’s good hand in both of his, pressing their tangled fingers to his lips briefly and resting his elbows on the edge of the bed. “I’m the last person in a position to judge you for surviving. But you’re not on your own anymore. I love you, your kids love you, their kids love you. Hell, your downstairs neighbor appointed herself as your pseudo-grandma and gave me a shovel talk.”

Sam starts to say something. John can see the moment the tail end of that catches up with him. “When did Eleanor give you a shovel talk?”

“Not the point,” John replies, even though they’re both trying not to laugh.

Sam’s face falls. “I can’t stop the bad spirals. I tried two months ago and, well,” he huffs a shallow, bitter laugh, “we both saw how that ended.”

John grips his hand, trying to communicate reassurance.“I’m not asking you to stop having your bad spirals. I told you in the kitchen and I’ll repeat it however many times I have to that those aren’t your fault. I’m saying this is a pattern and it would be unfair to both of us to let it keep happening and expect a different result.” He angles his head to make Sam meet his eyes again. “I can’t spend every day afraid that the things you’re doing to protect yourself are going to get you hurt, and you can’t spend every day trying to hide it from me. This might have worked when you were on your own, but it’s not working now. So I’m saying let’s find a better way to help both of us deal with this.” He glares a little at Sam, letting a smile creep out. “Then we can stop being idiots and do what we actually meant to do all along, which is take care of each other.”

Sam starts to laugh, cutting it short with a pained wince. “We’re not very good at this, are we?”

“Not really.”

Sam shuffles sideways on the bed, letting out a grunt and squeezing his eyes shut when he moves his shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“Making space for you.” Sam tugs on their joined hands, his eyes still screwed shut. “Get up here.”

“What if someone comes in?”

“Tell them I’m concussed and you have a gun.” Sam tries to shuffle again, hissing out his breaths when he does.

“Do I need to repeat the moving speech I just gave you about hurting yourself for other people is still hurting other people?”

Sam’s eyes open to slits. “Shut up and get up here.”

It takes a bit of finagling because Sam can’t move his head and shoulders, but they settle with Sam shuffled to one half of the bed with John curled on his side next to him, carefully resting against Sam’s good side with his head tucked near Sam’s jaw to keep Sam’s head still. “Is this alright?”

“Getting there.” He can still feel Sam’s face clenched, but eventually his breathing starts to even out again.

“Do you want me to get a nurse?”

“Not yet.”

“Nurses have drugs.”

Sam’s good arm curls around John, holding him in place. “What do I need drugs for? You’re here.”

“That is the sappiest thing you have ever said to me.”

“I’m concussed,” Sam replies, his breathing finally leveling out.

John traces circles on Sam’s chest, skirting around the bandages. “I’m still going to sic Annie and Poole on you if you check yourself out early.”

“Noted.”

“And we’re not done talking about this.”

“I’d certainly hope not.” Sam leans into John as much as he can. “I’ll try,” he says quietly into John’s hair.

John rests his palm over Sam’s heart, feeling the steady beat against his hand. “That’s all I ask.” They stay like that until a nurse comes in to kick John out at five, in a safe limbo where they don’t owe each other anything but solace and the promise of a warm place to rest.


End file.
